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“Can’t, or won’t?”
“Absolutely, positively won’t. You’re coming with me to Lenhale.”
Isavelle’s expression smolders with frustration. The scent of my outraged Omega washes over me, and I harden my heart to the knowledge that I’m making her furious. I don’t care that she’s furious with me.
Better furious than dead.
7
Isavelle
Zabriel is towering over me with a thunderous expression. Tears sting my eyes, and my voice shakes as I say, “But you said that I could go home.”
More tears well up. I hold my breath so I don’t sob like a child.
While I was a prisoner of the Brethren, I once asked the High Priest when I would be allowed to go home. Sometimes the Veiled Virgins return to their villages after serving for a year or two. Some ask to stay longer. The High Priest laughed cruelly and rubbed his fingers across his salt-and-pepper jaw, saying,What makes you think I’m letting you go, Harrow?
The days and weeks were long and cruel, and they stretched on and on, seemingly forever. I wanted to die. I craved to be turned to ash and blown away on the wind so I’d finally be free.
I never understood why the High Priest hated me so much. Sometimes I caught him staring at me, a furious expression on his face as if he didn’t understand it either. I have no doubt that throwing me onto the king’s funeral pyre was his idea. He was probably excited to see me burn.
The moonlight paints harsh shadows on Zabriel’s face, and his eyes glow red. “I said the people of Maledin could go home.”
The words he spoke were not the words I thought I heard. “Am I not a person to you?”
Zabriel clutches my upper arms. “You areeverythingto me. You were always meant to be mine.”
“Please, please let me go,” I beg him, and I can’t hold the tears back any longer. They spill down my cheeks in fat drops. “I won’t tell anyone we met. I’m not dangerous to you. I just want my family and then I’ll leave Maledin forever. I’ll do anything you want, just please let me go.”
I can’t stop myself from sobbing brokenly.
Zabriel presses his full lips together and shakes his head.
Hopeless tears spill down my cheeks. “Why are you doing this to me? I’m not beautiful and rich, or witty and charming. Is it that I can’t fight back? Is that exciting to you? Is there something about me that invites people to hurt me and push me around? Please tell me because I need to understand why this keeps happening.”
Zabriel makes a sound like he’s in pain. In a harsh whisper he says, “I should have been here to protect you. In a way, you are right. There’s a hierarchy in Maledinni society, and you’re at the bottom of it. The people around you can sense it, and when you fight back, they want to punish you for not giving them the obedience they crave.”
I wipe the tears from my cheeks, hiccupping as I try to catch my breath. Punish me for not giving them the obedience they crave? That’s exactly what the High Priest was doing. I kept defying him, and his cruelty worsened. The other Veiled Virgins told me to grovel before him, but I couldn’t stop fighting.
“So that’s why you want me,” I say in a broken whisper. Maybe it will be less painful just to give up.
“No, Isavelle. That’s not why I want you. You’re my only hope, and I’m yours.”
“Hope of what?”
Zabriel’s expression is heartfelt. Desperate. “If I don’t have you, I may as well turn to ashes and float away on the wind.”
That might be the craziest thing he’s said so far, and he claims he was trapped under the Bodan Mountains for centuries.
I shake my head. “You’re strong and you’re clever. You have a dragon and a sword. You’ll be fine without me.”
Zabriel’s jaw is tight, and the muscles on either side of his throat are flexing. I must be insane, making this enormous man furious with me. We’re all alone in the middle of the night, and we’re naked together. If he wanted to hurt me, there would be nothing I could do to stop him.
He sighs and rakes his fingers through his long hair, water running down his bicep and dripping from his elbow. “It’s late. We’re both exhausted and hungry, and Scourge needs to rest and feed after so many battles. All I care about right now is keeping the two of you safe.”
I wince. Am I his pet? That’s as terrible as being his prisoner. I’m something to put in a cage and play with when he’s bored, and as soon as he’s tired of me, I’ll be discarded.
He stands up so fast that I don’t have time to look away, and water cascades down his sculpted body. The man is more naked than it should be possible to be naked. With his dark hair spilling down his chest, his lower half stands out in stark relief, and I catch sight of that thing again.
